Excerpt From An Unpublished Essay: Lonely in Kino or The Long Stretch of Day. "Seri Originals"

Around the corner from the ice cream parlor that one could mistake for a puppet show stage, shallow and big faced and screaming out circus music, is the café where all the Gringos eat chile rellanos and tamales and drink horchata because the floor is smooth and swept and the owner wears a clean apron and keeps her hair tucked away in a bun and has, by good fortune, straight off-white teeth.  The Gringos meet there in the afternoon and feel reassured because they have learned to tell time by the sun and learned to love tortillas and say Hola! to the fishermen who don't even nod from the shadows of the twisted trees, watching the Gringos emerge from their shiny vehicles.  

The Gringos love the cafe because it is in Old Kino, tucked in among "the people" and the shacks and sandy unpaved streets.  The building isn't different from any of the other aluminum shacks, but is pleasant with a pot of fake flowers hanging from a dusty beam and a two year old calendar nailed to the back of the door. 
            Sometimes a new Gringo is there, sent by the woman who runs the posada, and then they have new ears to tell all about Kino and how the Seri Indians used to live east until they were pushed to the ocean by the Spanish, and lived here on this beach until they were forced into the mountains by the Ladinos, and how they carved animal figurines out of ironwood and wove tremendous baskets until a Ladino saw they were making money and copied the designs and produced them in factories and sold them cheap with the label "Seri Originals" and no one knew the difference so the Indians themselves came into town, bought pack loads full, carried them back up to their villages and sold them for a huge profit to the Gringos who searched them out, looking for the real thing.